Sunday, March 29, 2015

The National government richly deserved the lesson it got in
Northland. Since its re-election, it has treated voters with an attitude bordering
on contempt.

The day after the election, John Key warned his party
against third-term arrogance. He promptly proceeded to disregard his own advice
and has continued on much the same path ever since.

Yes, the government has plenty of reason to be cocky. The
economy is humming. Migration is running at record levels, indicating New
Zealand is seen as a desirable place to be.

A run of sporting successes – the Black Caps, the Wellington
Phoenix, the Breakers, the Hurricanes, Lydia Ko – has contributed to a feel-good
mood that will rub off on National, which is no doubt why Key is in Melbourne
today watching the cricket, rather than in Singapore attending the funeral of
Lee Kuan Yew (as Tony Abbott is). He
wants to share in any glory that’s going, just as he did in the embarrassing
three-way handshake at the Rugby World Cup in 2011.

National and Key are holding up well in the polls, too. But
for how long?

Virtually every action the government has taken so far in
this term has been tainted with the odour of hubris and, far worse, deceit. Even
when it got something right, as it did with its decision to commit a modest
force to Iraq, it brought discredit on itself by Key’s childish crowing in
Parliament.

“Get some guts and join the right side,” Key shouted at the
opposition benches. It didn’t just detract from National’s principled decision
(at least we hope it was principled, and not just a pragmatic attempt to stay
onside with more powerful allies); it also gave Labour leader Andrew Little the
perfect opportunity to respond that the people with real guts were the soldiers
being sent to a dangerous war zone, not Key in his comfy seat in the House of
Representatives.

I detect signs that the old born-to-rule mentality – never the
Nats’ most endearing quality, but mercifully out of sight for most of the MMP
era – is re-asserting itself. It was evident in the government’s smug certainty
(at least initially) that it would retain Northland, despite the cloud hanging
over its former MP. But there have been several other clues that Version 3 of
the Key government is of a subtly different character from those of the
previous two terms.

Exhibit One: The dust had barely settled after the election
before the government pushed through a bill exempting employers from the
obligation to provide paid rest and meal breaks.

As the first significant legislation of National’s third
term, it seemed a deeply symbolic statement. There seemed no other way to
interpret it than as a signal that the Key government was reverting to a
National Party archetype from an earlier era, shedding its friendly, centrist face
in favour of a more classical right-wing hard line on employment
relations.

To be fair, that message was modified by this week’s
introduction of legislation providing tougher penalties for companies that
breach employment laws. But given that it coincided with the increasing
preponderance of zero-hours contracts, which tilt contractual terms entirely in
favour of employers, the tea-break bill suggested a return to the days when conservative
governments were seen as unsympathetic, even hostile, to workers.

You don’t have to be a staunch trade unionist (I’m certainly
not, as most readers of this blog would know) to believe this runs counter to
the New Zealand belief in a fair go, especially for those with little or no
power to protect themselves. All else aside, it just looks mean-spirited that at
a time of robust economic growth, with the share market humming and most
companies reporting healthy profits, National passes legislation whittling away
workers’ traditional entitlements.

Until recently, this government had done a pretty good job
of convincing people that it didn’t just represent the sectional interests from
which National draws much of its financial backing. No doubt that’s one reason
why its popularity has remained steady. But you have to wonder whether the
party is abandoning that broad-church approach in favour of preferential
treatment for favoured groups.

Which brings me to Exhibit Two: Auckland’s proposed Skycity
Convention Centre. From the outset, this looked like a dodgy sweetheart deal.
But it began to look even more shonky when it emerged that the taxpayer was
likely to be left footing the bill for a massive cost blowout.

It seemed clear the government was prepared to go along with
this, and had indicated as much in cosy chats with Skycity. It was only when
the public revolted that National hastily engaged reverse gear, insisting that
a generous taxpayer handout to the casino company had only ever been a
technical option.

That’s not how it looked, and I don’t think people were
fooled. Either the government was incompetent in entering an arrangement that
was loaded in Skycity’s favour, or it was pandering to wealthy friends. Either
way, it smelled.

For Exhibit Three we need to go back to November, when National
bulldozed potentially intrusive new security laws through Parliament on the
pretext that urgent action was needed to save us from terrorists.

Nothing had been said about this in the lead-up to the
election only weeks before. No doubt the government would explain that by
saying the terrorism threat wasn’t apparent then, but a more likely explanation
is that electronic surveillance was a hot issue during the campaign and
National strategists didn’t want to give its opponents any more oxygen than
they already had.

Instead, we were asked to believe that the security risk had
escalated so suddenly and alarmingly that the government couldn’t afford the
luxury of normal parliamentary process.Only two days were allowed for submissions on a bill that greatly
increased the power of the SIS to pry into people’s lives.

When Radio New Zealand interviewer Guyon Espiner asked Chris
Finlayson, the minister in charge of the SIS, to explain the unseemly haste,
Finlayson testily replied that the government had no time for “chit-chat”. He
subsequently apologised, but didn’t look at all contrite.

The imperious Finlayson gave the impression of believing the
government was under no obligation to explain itself. Dammit, why couldn’t we
just trust National to get on with things without the inconvenience and
nuisance of public scrutiny?

Exhibit Four: The selloff of state housing. Either this was
poorly conceived and executed (it was certainly poorly explained to the public),
or the government’s real agenda all along was less admirable than it wanted us
to think.

Either interpretation is open. The first is supported by the
fact that the Salvation Army, whose acceptance of the deal appeared crucial to
its credibility, decided it wasn’t feasible.

If things had been handled properly, the Sallies’ support
would surely have been locked in earlier. After all, the disposal of state
housing was a centrepiece of the government’s programme for the year; you’d
expect every T to be crossed and I dotted.

The second interpretation, the conspiratorial one, is that
the Salvation Army’s putative involvement was always just a smokescreen to make
the proposal look respectable, and that the real purpose was to get state
housing off the government’s books whatever it took.

And hey, if the Sallies weren’t interested, private
developers might be. Could that have been the government’s preferred option all
along, and one that would play well to business interests eager to make a buck
from cheap state assets? Given past experience, in the energy sector
especially, people could hardly be blamed for being cynical.

Exhibit Five is the nonchalance with which National
initially approached the Northland by-election. Key talked as if all the
party’s candidate, the hapless Mark Osborne, had to do was turn up. Never mind
that the sitting National MP, Mike Sabin, had gone AWOL in circumstances that
remain unexplained. It seemed to be assumed that loyal Northland voters would unquestioningly
fall into line regardless.

But even Winston Peters gets something right occasionally,
and he did the country a favour by making National squirm in the North. It was
almost a pleasure watching the government’s complacency turn to panic as it
realised it had a fight on its hands.

It’s hard to recall a more naked display of schmoozing and
vote-buying than that which followed, although whether swarms of Cabinet
ministers in leather-upholstered limos did National any favours in impoverished
Northland is a moot point. More likely, the so-called charm offensive simply
reminded locals of how rarely they’ve featured on the government’s radar.

Overshadowing all the above is Exhibit Six – arguably the
most damaging of all, because it suggests Key plays fast and loose with the
public’s trust.

I refer here to his shifty response when he faces questions
from journalists. He is slippery and evasive, often batting legitimate
questions away with bland, airy-fairy dismissals.

His consistent refusal to give satisfactory answers,
especially on matters relating to electronic surveillance and the GCSB, has
become embarrassing to watch. What’s more, it plays into the hands of Nicky
Hager and the conspiracy theorists, since it suggests Key and his government
have something to hide.

Voters signalled clearly last September that they would not
allow Hager’s strategically timed anti-government disclosures to sway the
election result. But the election is six months behind us now and the
revelations just keep coming. Far from dousing speculation about what the GCSB
gets up to, Key gives it momentum by adopting that familiar blank “I know
nothing” look whenever reporters start asking questions.

Arguably the most damaging of the leaks related to Trade
Negotiations Minister Tim Groser’s bid to become head of the World Trade
Organisation, where it’s claimed the GCSB was used to spy on Groser’s rivals.

Most of the allegations previously swirling around the government
spy bureau involved esoteric issues, too far removed from the reality of most
people’s lives to register as important or relevant to them; but eavesdropping
on rival candidates for a job is something anyone can understand.

And while the public may be persuaded that electronic
monitoring is necessary where national security is involved, even if it’s
illicit or duplicitous and risks getting us offside with friendly countries, it
becomes much harder to justify when the purpose is merely to help a National
insider score a prestigious international job.

That just seems sneaky, and it was made worse by Key’s
dismissive comment that Groser’s rivals “wouldn’t give a monkey’s”. That type
of flippant dismissal might be acceptable with his mates on the golf course,
but it falls far short of what New Zealanders are entitled to expect from their
prime minister.

It both trivialised and sidestepped the issue. If Key isn’t
willing to answer legitimate questions fairly and squarely, he should stop
making himself available to journalists. As it is, he plays the public for suckers
and makes a mockery of the principle of accountability.

Even Bill English, usually a straight shooter, seems to have
adopted a Key-like approach to uncomfortable questions. In his case, this
sometimes involves denying what is screamingly obvious – for example, that the
Salvation Army’s withdrawal from the proposed state housing split-up was a
setback for the government. Not at all, said Bill, unblinking. Hmmm.

It’s as if, having survived the firestorm of the 2014
election campaign with his personal popularity intact, Key has decided he and his
government are bulletproof. But like water on rock, suspicions about government
integrity have the potential to gradually erode his credibility.

And that’s essentially what we’re talking about here:
integrity. A government that can’t be trusted to be honest with the people
doesn’t deserve to stay in power.

Thursday, March 26, 2015

(First published in the Nelson Mail and Manawatu Standard, March 25.)You know hysteria over
alcohol has reached an entirely new level when a waitress refuses to serve a
glass of sparkling wine to a pregnant woman.

It happened last week in
Auckland. The woman, 36 weeks pregnant with her second child, was out for dinner with her husband to
celebrate their wedding anniversary. She said she was flabbergasted and
embarrassed when the waitress refused her request.

The duty manager backed his
staff member, claiming he had discretion under law to refuse service “for health
reasons”. (Wrong: the law stipulates only that minors and intoxicated people are
barred from being served.)

The woman, a teacher, was compensated
with a free ginger beer. How bloody humiliating.

To his credit, the co-owner
of the bar subsequently apologised for his over-zealous staff and acknowledged
they had no right to do what they did. But he added – and here’s the
significant bit – that he could understand why they acted that way, given
health warnings about the effects of intoxication and growing pressure from
society and the authorities to exercise “host responsibility”.

So this is what it has come
to. Alcohol is now so demonised that an apparently intelligent, mature, sober
woman in the last weeks of a healthy pregnancy is denied a single glass of wine
because busybody bar staff are worried that it will pose a threat to her baby’s
health.

To be sure, foetal alcohol
syndrome, whereby chronic brain damage is done to babies exposed to excessive
alcohol in the womb, is a terrible thing. But I suspect its risks have been
greatly overstated.

A generation ago, we’d never
heard of it. Women knew intuitively not to drink heavily during pregnancy, but I
know of none who abstained completely.

My wife drank in moderation
throughout her pregnancies and all four of our children are normal (at least as
far as I can tell). The same was true of our friends.

But women are now are so
intimidated by health warnings that they daren’t touch a drop of alcohol from the
moment their pregnancy is confirmed till the baby is safely delivered. This is crazy.

The mantra promoted by
anti-liquor obsessives in public health agencies and universities is
that no amount of alcohol is safe. No doubt that’s true, in a strictly theoretical
sense, but it’s also theoretically correct that you can’t venture out in your
car without risking an accident.

That doesn’t deter us from
driving. As with so many things in life, we make sensible, balanced judgments
about what poses an unacceptable degree of risk. If our lives were to be governed
by fear of theoretical harm, we would spend our lives cowering indoors.

The trouble is, control
freaks and moral crusaders in positions of influence within the bureaucracy and
academia don’t trust ordinary people to make common-sense decisions about how
they conduct their lives.

Through a long campaign of
scaremongering (mostly funded by the taxpayer), they have largely succeeded in
persuading society that because a small minority of drinkers over-indulge in
alcohol and do bad things to themselves and others, everyone must be subjected
to prohibitions.

Because a few women recklessly
binge-drink during pregnancy, at obvious risk to their babies, all pregnant
women are now made to feel guilty and irresponsible if they have a single glass
of wine.

This is absurd. Britain’s
National Health Service guidelines state that experts are still unsure how much
alcohol is safe in pregnancy, so the best approach is not to drink at all. Call
this the failsafe option.

More realistically, the Royal
College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists says small amounts of alcohol (not
more than one to two units once or twice a week) have not been shown to be
harmful.

It’s a big leap from there to
saying that pregnant women must abstain totally.But the anti-liquor obsessives have created
such a climate of moral panic that even bar staff now feel empowered to tell a
sober, mature woman what she may or may not drink.

The police, too, have been
caught up in this moral crusade, enforcing the new drink-driving laws with a
rigour that comes close to harassment. Drivers are likely to encounter police
checkpoints anywhere and at any hour of the day – even on their way to work in
the morning.

Police justify this by saying
people can still be over the limit from the night before. But really, how many
serious accidents are caused by drunks driving to work? It’s ridiculous, and it
lends weight to the suspicion that it’s more about revenue gathering than road
safety.

Of course the statistics look good if
they show that police have trapped hundreds of slightly over-the-limit
drivers, thereby preventing (or so they would like us to believe) mayhem and carnage on the roads. But this over-zealous crackdown risks alienating
public goodwill, especially when anecdotal evidence suggests that people dialling
111 about what might be called “real” crime – break-ins, shoplifting, stock thefts and the
like – are often told the police don’t have the resources to respond.

Saturday, March 21, 2015

THEY’RE a strange lot, the Poms. They eat something called
supper. They “take” baths (one a week is the norm, I believe). They drive
lorries.

They wear quaintly named garments (mackintoshes and vests, for
instance), they get terribly excited about something they call foopball, and
they invented the world’s only sport where you can play for five days and not
get a result

As if all that weren’t weird enough, the Poms adore Top Gear.

My idea of torture is to be strapped into a chair and forced
to watch endless repeats of Top Gear.
I would rather be tethered to a pole in front of an Islamic State encampment
with an insulting cartoon of the prophet Mohammad (peace be upon him) hung
around my neck.

It’s not that I’m not interested in cars. I always read the
Dom Post’s Saturday motoring pages and can even tell you that Fairfax Media’s
motoring editor is 1.88 metres tall. (I know this because he tells us at least
once a month, under the guise of illustrating the headroom in the car he’s
testing.)

No, it’s the juvenile antics and relentless “laddish” humour
of Top Gear that I can’t abide. In
fact I abhor the whole British cult of laddishness, which seems contrived to
give grown men licence to remain in a state of perpetual adolescence.

Top Gear strikes
me as a slightly desperate celebration of Britishness in a world where being
British doesn’t quite cut it the way it used to. Its male fans are probably the
sort of people who have erotic fantasies involving Kate Bush, or perhaps Nigella Lawson, and who yearn for
Pink Floyd to reform.

I cringe at the sight of James May. He’s one of those
shabby, ageing Englishmen who seem to think it cool to still wear his hair long
even when it’s grey and straggly. I can’t think of any older man with long hair
who wouldn’t look better if it were cut short, but May probably imagines it
makes him look like a rock god.

Then there’s the little guy whose name I can never remember
– the cute, perky one that women probably feel like mothering. I can’t look at
him without thinking of Davy Jones from the Monkees.

But most of all Top
Gear is associated with Jeremy Clarkson, whose main function seems to be to
get into trouble on a regular basis so as to reinforce the programme’s image of
irreverent laddishness (that word again) and devil-may-care disregard for
propriety.

This plays well to Top
Gear’s gormless fans (you know they’re gormless from the uncritically rapt
looks on the faces of the studio audience) and ensures the show is never out of
the headlines for long.

Clarkson comes across as a loudmouth – a clever and witty
loudmouth, but a loudmouth nonetheless. He’s a big man and I imagine he was
probably a bully at school.

He’s casually disparaging toward other cultures, which
reinforces the sense that Top Gear
represents the old English mindset that the wogs start at Calais and all non-Anglo-Saxon
cultures exist to be mocked.

It was no surprise to learn that he’s a Chelsea Football
Club supporter. That’s a laddish outfit too, of a deeply unattractive kind,
with a history of hooliganism and xenophobia. (The racist yobbos who monstered
a black man trying to board a train in Paris recently were Chelsea supporters. No
surprises there.)

I can, however, understand why a petition supporting Clarkson
would attract lots of signatures. People feel cowed and oppressed by political
correctness and get a quiet thrill when someone has the balls to defy it, as
Clarkson frequently does. Someone has described him as television’s answer to
the Duke of Edinburgh, a man widely admired for the same reasons.

We have yet to learn exactly what triggered the latest Top Gear furore. There was some sort of altercation
in a hotel restaurant. One report said Clarkson punched a producer when he
found out no hot food was available after a long day’s filming.

I was right, then – he’s a bully. It’s easy to become
irritable when you’re tired and your blood sugar levels are low, but most
people stop short of throwing punches.

Clarkson has now been suspended by the BBC and the three
remaining episodes of the current Top Gear
series were cancelled.

The whole pantomime unfolded as if following a script, but
it stirred up the tribal Top Gear
fans and might breathe enough life into the tired old formula to keep it
wheezing along for another series.

Clarkson himself seems unchastened, as well he might be. It
would be surprising if the BBC sacked its most precious talent for doing
exactly what his fans love him for.

More likely the whole circus will blow over. The besotted
fans will keep watching and Clarkson will bank a few more million. As I say, a
strange lot.

Footnote: Quite by chance, I caught a glimpse of a promo for Top Gear this week. It was the night before my column was published and I observed that James May appeared to have had a haircut. Clearly he did it purely to embarrass me, but he does look much improved.

Thursday, March 12, 2015

There’s something about capital punishment that chills me to
the bone.

It’s partly that it’s so coldly deliberate and
pre-meditated. Most murders are impulsive acts, carried out in the rage and heat of the
moment, but state-sanctioned executions are meticulously planned and
orchestrated.

The condemned are taken to the place of execution and given
plenty of time to contemplate their fate. What would it be like, I wonder,
knowing that you’re on a bus trip to a destination from which you’ll never
return? What sort of refined mental torment is that?

They are informed of the time of their execution and can see
the clock ticking away. I often think it would be more humane if they were taken
from their cell and hanged (or shot, or given a lethal injection, or whatever)
without warning.

A strange tradition requires that they be allowed to choose
their last meal. It seems cruelly, almost sadistically, banal. I imagine deciding
between fish and chips or a mushroom omelette would be the last thing on the prisoner's
mind.

In most cases, families are allowed to see them one last
time. What a strained, unreal meeting that must be. What would they talk about?
You wouldn’t exactly use the occasion to remind Uncle Pete to return that book
he borrowed three years ago.

No, capital punishment is a grotesque ritual in which the
act of death is only part of the punishment. Arguably the bigger part is the agony
of having months, often years, in which to anticipate your last moment alive.

I realise all this must sound pathetically touchy-feely,
since people who go to the gallows or the execution chamber have often done
unspeakable things. Usually they have killed, and perhaps tortured or raped as
well.

In the case of the two Australian citizens now awaiting
execution in Indonesia, their crime was less monstrous. They were the leaders
of a drug ring that tried to smuggle 8.2 kg of heroin from Indonesia to
Australia.

Does that mean they deserve to die, then? Sympathisers, including Australian prime minister Tony Abbott, say the
pair have earned the right to mercy because they have transformed themselves in
prison. But a cynic might counter that it’s surprising how often criminals
undergo a miraculous change of heart once they’ve been caught.

Imprisonment might have conveniently awakened their
consciences, but what if their crime hadn’t been detected? They would very
likely have carried on to become wealthy drug kingpins, causing untold harm and
misery.

Besides, the Bali Nine knew the risk they were taking. They
could hardly have been ignorant of Indonesia’s hard line on drugs.

Those are some of the arguments being trotted out in favour
of Indonesia’s right to execute, and there’s an element of truth in all of
them. But they fall far short of justification.

Capital punishment - state-sanctioned killing - is supposedly acceptable because society
is so horrified by certain types of crime that it demands the ultimate retribution. An
additional argument is that execution serves as a deterrent to others,
although that’s hardly borne out in the United States, where states that retain
capital punishment (such as Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi) also have the
highest murder rates.

But ultimately, the debate over capital punishment comes
down to a question of human rights, of which the right to life is the most fundamental.

We place such value on human life that to terminate it is
considered the ultimate crime. It’s surely contradictory as well as morally
wrong, then, to punish people who kill by, ahem, killing them.Where’s the logic in showing society’s disapproval
by carrying out the very act disapproved of?

There are compelling pragmatic reasons, too, for opposing
capital punishment, the most obvious one being the possibility that people
could be executed for crimes they didn’t commit. What country would want the death
of Teina Pora on its conscience, to take an obvious example?

But above all, it comes down to respect for human life – the
defining mark of a civilised society.

And here’s something to think about. In New Zealand, nearly
half a million babies have been aborted since 1974.

If you believe, as I do, that the right to life applies
across the board, and that it can’t be apportioned selectively for society’s
convenience, then our abortion figures are as shameful as hanging people or
putting them in front of a firing squad – indeed some would say worse, since unborn
babies have committed no greater crime than being conceived.

Acceptance of abortion is a shocking blind spot, a grotesque
double standard, in a society that rightly rejects capital punishment. We recoil in horror at the number of
executions in Saudi Arabia, China and Texas, yet turn a blind eye to the
snuffing out of human life on an infinitely greater scale right here in New
Zealand.

It’s both hypocritical and contradictory to condemn capital
punishment while condoning the quiet extinguishing of human life every day in
abortion clinics. But we tiptoe around this issue because we feel uncomfortable
confronting it, and because protection of the unborn is seen as inconsistent
with the rigid orthodoxies of feminism.

Monday, March 9, 2015

My distant cousin Phil Quin is a Labour Party man but he writes with great clarity and insight on the need for action against Islamic State. He posted this robust piece on the Medium website (https://medium.com)

Saturday, March 7, 2015

In my last column I wrote about two local government politicians
from urban Auckland who came to Masterton to tell us what a wonderful thing
council amalgamation was.

I pointed out that it would have been more relevant, from a
Wairarapa perspective, to hear the opinion of someone from Rodney or Franklin,
the two semi-rural districts that had been either wholly or partly sucked in (some might say suckered in) by
Auckland.

A few days later I got an email advising of another public
meeting at which the speaker would be the chairman of the Pukekohe-based Franklin
local board, Andrew Baker.

Having painted myself into a corner, I had no option but to
hear what he had to say.

Baker, a farmer and former policeman, turned out to be an enthusiastic
and articulate advocate of amalgamation. He admitted having serious misgivings
when Franklin was “pulled asunder” in 2010 (part went to Auckland, part to Hauraki and part to Waikato) and said he could empathise with
people in the Wairarapa who feared losing control over their own affairs if the
region was absorbed by Wellington, as proposed by the Local Government
Commission.

He then proceeded to list the ways in which Franklin had
benefited.

Within a year of amalgamation, council-owned Watercare
Services had committed $130 million to the upgrading of Pukekohe’s “terrible”
water supply. The old Franklin council could never have afforded that, Baker
said.

Local roading had been greatly improved and the rural fire
service, which had made do with 30-year-old trucks and second-hand hoses, had acquired
a fleet of modern 4WD vehicles and shiny new gear. The bigger rating base made
all the difference.

Baker said the board had control over its own $20 million budget and
was well connected with local communities. The chairman was the equivalent of
the former mayor and focused entirely on local issues.

He had no opinion on what should happen in
Wellington but noted that under the Local Government Commission’s plan, local
decision-making powers would be greater than in Auckland.

Perhaps his most potent argument, at least for a Masterton
audience, was that Franklin rates were going down this year, the result of a
rating system that puts most of the rates burden on high-value city properties.

A cynic might say that it’s in Baker’s interests to put the
best possible spin on the system that employs him (the chairmanship is a
full-time job), and he made no mention of the widespread and deeply felt aversion to the new
governance model in Auckland. But it was a good sales pitch nonetheless.

We are left with a hard choice. Do we place our faith in the
Big Government model, or do we insist on the right of a socially and
geographically distinct region like the Wairarapa to run its own affairs?

There are powerful arguments both ways, but they are more sharply defined in the Wairarapa than
elsewhere because it stands apart from Wellington in a way that the Hutt
Valley, Porirua and Kapiti don’t.

I can’t help wondering why the issue is presented as an either/or
choice. Why not take a middle course? The three Wairarapa councils could merge,
along with the two Hutt cities. Wellington and Porirua could join together,
perhaps absorbing Kapiti too, and the regional council could be retained to do
what it does now, though perhaps with slightly enhanced powers.

That might overcome some of the objections to the commission’s
Big Bang proposal. It would deliver potential efficiency gains without
re-inventing the wheel and there would be a more compelling logic to the new
boundaries.

One important question that doesn’t seem to have been asked
yet, at least publically, is this: assuming the commission’s plan goes ahead,
who would be the super-mayor?

It’s important because whoever gets the job will not only be
a powerful figure politically, but could largely determine how well the model
works.

There’s little doubt that some of the negativity surrounding
Auckland is due to people’s dislike of Len Brown. It follows that the public
has an interest in knowing who might be the supremo of a Greater Wellington.

Most informed observers seem to assume that regional council chair
Fran Wilde has her eye on the job. Certainly, she has pushed aggressively for
amalgamation. But when I asked her about it this week, she kicked for touch.
Whether she stood for the mayoralty, she replied, would depend on the shape of
the final governance arrangements and her personal circumstances at the time.

It was a politician’s answer, as you’d
expect.But Wilde didn’t rule out
standing, and I’d be surprised if it wasn’t part of her grand plan.

About Me

I am a freelance journalist and columnist living in the Wairarapa region of New Zealand. In the presence of Greenies I like to boast that I walk to work each day - I've paced it out and it's about 15 metres. I write about all sorts of stuff: politics, the media, music, wine, films, cycling and anything else that piques my interest - even sport, though I admit I don't have the intuitive understanding of sport that most New Zealand males absorb as if by osmosis. I'm a former musician (bass and guitar) with a lifelong love of music that led me to write my book 'A Road Tour of American Song Titles: From Mendocino to Memphis', published by Bateman NZ in July 2016. I've been in journalism for more than 40 years and like many journalists I know a little bit about a lot of things and probably not enough about anything. I have never won any journalism awards.